


just might get some sleep tonight

by maplemood



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Backstory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flashbacks, Gen, Missing Scene, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 01:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17736182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood
Summary: Except for the one time, Mom always did grab hold of Amy when she was sick or after she’d had a nightmare, held her and rocked her and said,You’re right here. You’re safe. You’re right here, Amy.It’s not like she’s asking Frank to do that.





	just might get some sleep tonight

The first time Amy _remembers_ waking up out of a screaming nightmare she’s five, six, maybe seven. Tries to crawl into bed with Mom, forgetting Darryl’s already in there with her, and in the morning Mom kicks Darryl out and brings Amy along to work, sits her down in the back corner booth and sneaks out a double serving of strawberry French toast. “On the house,” Mom says with that wink, the one that used to warm Amy down to her toes every time and still does, sometimes, and then she fishes a straw out of her apron pocket and frowns. “Baby? You’re okay, right? It was just a bad dream, baby.”

Amy says, “Don’t go.” She’s a twitchy kid, tense. Jackrabbit, Mom says, as in, _Hey, Amy Jackrabbit! We’re going to be just fine._

“I’ve got to get back to work,” she’s saying now, her lips pleating in, her eyes worried. “I’ll bring you another Coke, okay? I’m right here, baby. Right here.”

Later, when it’s far enough away—she can’t just pretend it never happened—Amy tries to remember the nightmare, what part of it scared her that bad. She never does. She remembers the diner better, the peeling fake-leather booth seat pasting itself to the backs of her sweaty legs, the strawberry syrup puddling in her plate and drizzling off her fork, the French toast settling like a log in her gut. Mom in her clean white shirt and clean black pants and stained blue apron, Mom walking away from her. Amy remembers swinging her legs and drinking glass after glass of Coke, then water. She remembers needing to pee so bad she almost didn’t make it to the bathroom.

When she does remember the feeling that had her bolting up, crying her eyes out in the middle of the night, Amy’s ten years old, in the back of a police car. Flashing ambulance lights splatter all across the front of their crummy little house, and the policewoman asks her if she’s okay, _Honey, can you talk to me, can you tell me what happened, honey,_ and all Amy can think is, _This is happening. This is_ real, except it doesn’t feel real. It feels dark and panicky and swirled-together claustrophobic, the lights punching, her legs shaking and her fingers drumming _let me out, let me out,_ something awful boiling in her stomach, _let me OUT_ —it feels like a dream.

***

Blood—lots of it, enough to soak through the carpet, work its way under her fingernails and into the creases of her fingers and stay there, faint grimy traces, for days—blood smells. Coppery’s what Amy always heard, but coppery doesn’t cover it. She thinks copper, she thinks something with a tang to it, something sharp and clean. Blood’s dirty. Thick and clotted, mixed with pieces of everything else, soft and spongy, sharp and gritty. It’s meaty. It’s dark. It sticks itself to the back of your throat until you want to throw up.

Under the bed. She was under the bed and Amy remembers worrying it would soak through the mattress, dribble down on her and she’d feel it oozing in, trickle through her hair, having to hold still like it was nothing, come out looking like Carrie, smelling like all of them, Cy and Nicole and Luis and Fiona and all the parts of them blown open, leaking out.

With Mom. Back with Mom she had this little pink princess-style bed, roses and stars stenciled on the headboard. Amy would crawl under it, too, the pink slats hanging over her head, the mattress sagging in between the pink slats, Mom crying in the other room and someone, some man whose name and face she can’t remember, yelling, _She doesn’t look anything like me, Luce. You get that test, then we’ll see. We’ll see._

It’s always got something to do with a man. Why is that? What was wrong with Mom, that she couldn’t put two and two together, swear off them for good? What’s wrong with Amy, that she just can’t avoid them? There’s a man in the other room now, and he’s got her, got her good and tight—he won’t let her go.

 _He doesn’t want to,_ Amy thinks, like that makes any sense. Half the time she’s pretty sure Frank wants to dump her on the side of the road or punch her face in, but he doesn’t. He just gives her this _look,_ flinty, like he’s taken her measure and whatever he came up with doesn’t cut it. What a gentleman. She hates that look.

Thinking about it, Amy curls up tighter under Madani’s bed, knees to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees. She closes her eyes and feels her lips pleat in exactly the way Mom’s used to, and she thinks it’s going to show up in her dreams all over again, all of it.

Blood. She remembers the blood.

Fiona running sticky through her fingers.

Mom—it always comes back to Mom— _Amy-baby, you’ve got to get out of here. Go, go, call the police, go, run—_

She cries herself to sleep, and she wakes up panicked, and both times Amy hears Frank in the other room. He’s not yelling, not pushing someone around or breaking things, but he isn’t any better than them, any of them except maybe the man in black with the preacher shirt, because Frank hears Amy crying, hears her under the bed, and he doesn’t do a thing.

***

On jobs for Fiona, in a million different shabby motel rooms across the country, Amy and Nicole would pack into bed next to each other. The only two girls, so they always had to share, _Move your butt, give me that blanket,_ Amy sometimes imagining it was Mom next to her, Mom’s foot constantly poking hers.

Except for the one time, Mom always did grab hold of Amy when she was sick or after she’d had a nightmare, held her and rocked her and said, _You’re right here. You’re safe. You’re right here, Amy._

It’s not like she’s asking Frank to do that.

It’s not like she’s even asking him to care. Amy’s not a little girl anymore. She tells herself, _You’re right here, Amy._ Might not be safe, but she’s here. She’s still going. She isn’t a kid; it doesn’t matter how young she sometimes feels.

***

Amy crawls under the tiny bed in Curt’s tiny trailer, leaves Frank outside, staring at the stars or getting ready to howl at the moon or whatever it is he plans on doing. Her hands’re shaking, no blood on them but it’s like she can smell it anyway, all the meaty stickiness mixed with peppery, vinegary hot sauce, dribbling threads like strawberry syrup.

Frank, she drags him to the front of her mind to growl at her again: _His blood ain’t worth a single one of your tears._ But what’s worth crying over, then? What does that make you, dry-eyed after basically killing a person?

Frank. Frank, the way he looked at her then, nothing like the ways he’s looked at her before. Boots thundering up the stairs, voice thundering through the stairwell. Following Amy, no matter where she goes.

“You’re here,” she whispers, “we’re here.” Amy closes her eyes. Knows what’s coming, just wants this day over with, far enough away that she can think back to it, maybe make some sense of it—that’s not going to happen, when’s the last time her life made sense?

Chicago. She can feel it, this neon-sharp smear pulsing at the back of her head like ambulance lights, so Amy drifts off expecting Fiona and Nicole and everyone else bleeding out as usual, expecting she’ll stay under the bed, maybe even expecting Frank to bust his way in, the white skull on his vest starting to stain brown from the blood he never bothers washing off, and instead she shoots even further back. To Mom’s house, her pink princess bed, hands curled to fists, blood in her mouth, she’s biting her tongue so hard, knocking, screaming coming through the walls.

_Amy, Amy-baby, Amy—_

_And if you hadn’t come in there to get me, if you’d run out the front door without me, if you hadn’t stayed, if you were smarter, if I were braver—_

“Kid—”

Front door banging behind her, screen door catching her heel, stinging, blood, the grass prickling under her feet, middle of the night, middle of autumn in her pajamas, running across the street, banging on the door, yelling, yelling, crying, lights flashing, blood in her mouth _what’s wrong honey what’s wrong—_

“Kid—” His hand latched around her arm like a vice, cranked tight, Frank yanks Amy out from under the bed.

Not that she realizes it’s him at first. Her heart’s going jackrabbit-fast, pounding in her head and throat and wrists. She’s not screaming but she’s not not screaming either, and her eyes are blurred and whatever Amy’s saying, she sure can’t understand it.

And somebody’s pulling her upright, getting her into a sitting position, somebody’s arms are crushed around her waist and somebody’s voice is rasping in her ear, “There’s no blood, kid. There’s no blood. You’re safe. You hear me right now? You’re safe.”

_If I were braver, none of this would’ve happened._

“Hey. Hey. Listen to me. You gotta calm down.” A hand on her forehead, smoothing through her hair, and Amy reaches up to swat at it and the same hand catches hers, squeezes it, not hard but very firmly. “Stop that. You gotta calm down.”

“Wait,” says Amy. First word out of her mouth that makes sense, except what she says next makes zero sense. “Wait, did you hear me?” Her throat feels like sandpaper. “Was I crying?”

“Shh.” Another rasp in her ear.

Her eyes burn, blink too fast. “Frank.”

“I got you,” he says. “Just breathe, huh?” One arm still around her waist, his free hand still squeezing hers, lowering it for her because Amy’s frozen suddenly, frozen but she’s shaking.

“I wasn’t brave enough,” she says, shaking, practically in Frank’s lap and the dream pulsing, hot and solid and breathing at the back of her head. “I couldn’t stop it, I didn’t know what to do. Frank, I didn’t know—”

“Listen to me.”

“Frank—”

“What did I just say? Huh?” He squeezes her hand again. “Listen to me.”

And Amy stops, Amy listens because Frank’s got his arms around her and what else is she supposed to do, who else can she turn to? He’s all she has left.

“You were exactly as brave as you needed to be,” Frank says in the way he has, like it’s the one and only truth and you’d be worse than stupid not to believe it.

Amy tries, anyway. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Wobbling, nasty but no real snap to it.

“I know what I saw.”

 _You know me,_ but how can he, when they barely know each other; Amy’s crying again and in her ear, in her ear Frank’s saying, “Breathe with me. Kid, you breathe with me, come on,” and he’s holding her, his chest rising, falling, and Amy’s holding on to him, and—

She can’t smell the blood anymore.

“Come on,” Frank says. “Come on.”

So she breathes.

And breathes.

And breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Friend of the Devil" by The Grateful Dead.


End file.
